Rufus Thomas, Jr.

Before the records, Thomas was a vaudeville man with a day job. He joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in 1936 as a tap dancer and comedian, and with Robert Counce he later formed a tap-and-scat act called Rufus and Bones. He worked at a Memphis textile bleaching plant for more than twenty years, quitting in 1963, the year Walking the Dog reached number ten on the pop chart. His 1953 Bear Cat for Sun, an answer to Hound Dog, became the label's first national hit and brought a lawsuit that nearly bankrupted it.

What the plaque says

Rufus Thomas, Jr. (Obverse) Born March 26, 1917, in Cayce, Mississippi, this legendary entertainer known worldwide, began his career in the 1930s with the Rabbit Foot Minstrel Shows. He was the organizer and master of ceremonies of the amateur shows in the 1940s and 1950s at the Palace Theatre, which stood at this site. From these shows began the careers of many great performers, including B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland. (Reverse) He had the first hit records for both the Sun and Stax labels. As a popular personality on WDIA, he was the first disc jockey to play Elvis Presley records on a Black radio station. He was the creator of two of the biggest dance crazes of the 1960s--"The Dog" and "The Funky Chicken."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beale Street — steps away
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 0.5 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 0.6 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.
• Sun Studio — 0.7 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Nat D. Williams — steps away
• Pee Wee's Saloon — steps away
• Ida B. Wells — steps away
• Danny Thomas — steps away